My book, The Werewolves Of Central Park, is out! FINALLY. A book. I’ve always said I wanted my tombstone bare, nothing but an ISBN number on it. Starbooks Press has fulfilled that dream in part, so thank you boys. Now Werewolves is wonderfully pornographic, a wildly erotic frolic through the Ramble, midnight Central Park. I described it as "Ovid on acid" to someone and I like that description. I assigned creatures from Greek mythology to various stereotypes within New York City gay culture. It’s a bit more of a confection than my other long work, and that was purposeful. After my previous novella, Pacific Rimming, I really needed to tackle lighter fare.
Here’s an excerpt and an interview:
The Werewolves Of Central Park: Chapter One | Interview
One tiny part of this book was published in the anthology So Fey: Queer Faery Fiction. This was a wonderful piece of luck: the first time I've participated in a reading I tried out this segment of the book. I was super nervous and half-tipsy AND ended up sharing the stage with Steve Berman, the editor of So Fey- who liked the piece enough to use it (and has been sweet enough to think of me for other projects and has recommended some interesting fantasy novels to me). I helped organize a reading of Housing Works, it was great meeting the other writers and hearing their stories, a special night for a wonderful book.
I was also fortunate to find a home for my novella, Pacific Rimming, with Velvet Mafia -ultimately I had to admit that this piece is too short to stand on its own in physical print, but I think it might make a good cornerstone for a collection of short stories. In re-reading/editing the story before publication, I really have to wonder just how thin the line is between minimalism and anemia. Oh well.
This, in part, is how I described it to publishers in the cover letter: “This is a novel of obsession. The story, told in the first person for immediacy, takes place in late nineties New York City. The protagonist is unnamed as obsession supplants identity. He's created a life of drug use and sexual conquest to avoid emotional intimacy, focusing exclusively on Asian men. This cycle nearly gets broken, but some barriers cannot be breached -to build a barrier often means something had to be displaced, not merely shielded, meaning this is not a novel of redemption. In terms of psycho-sexual-racial profiling, this phenomenon seems to be as ignored in gay literature as it is pervasive. We're all too obsessed with our own minority status to realize how efficiently we enshrine other types of bigotry. However this book is meant to reveal a psychology, not explain it or apologize for it.” Phew.
I think that a book without redemption is as important as those that come with moral parachutes at the end, or potentially more honest. I hope that's a good description; writing the cover letter was more arduous than writing the story. It's like a one-way first date: nightmare city.